Man was I wrong. I went over to their dorm at 830am so that we could make our way over early to the festival, which started at 10am. I figured that it would be in the space near the shipyard, but it was actually IN the shipyard itself. There was a large area cleared with tarps laid down underneath huge metal ceiling frames. There was a stage in front and the area was ringed with cauldrons and griddles suspended over barrels full of burnables. "Small-type festival atmosphere" this was certainly not.
Upon entry to the shipyard complex everyone was given a sheet with a tear-off raffle ticket and a voucher for one ice cream. Other than that limitation, everything was free and all you can eat. The ceremony opened with a bunch of shipyard officials speaking some Japanese and then opening a wicker basket with a flourish and a pop of fireworks and releasing a flock of white doves into the air. It was pretty impressive. The officials were all garbed in festival clothing covered in elephants. See, in Japanese, "shipyard" is "zousen" (make + ship, or something along those lines) and "elephant" is just "zou", but with a different kanji. Japanese people love stuff like that, it seems.
There was a full schedule of events throughout the day besides the ridiculous amounts of food. One of the first was a children's taiko group. In a word, they were adorable, but they were also pretty good too. Some of these kids couldn't have been more than 5!
In a change-up from the kids entertaining everyone there was also a pretty intricately choreographed and lip-synced character show. Think "Power Rangers" if you are not sure what to imagine. Or just go check out the pictures on the flickr. There is also a video of one of the other musical acts there. It almost sounds like it could be Native American or something. Pretty groovy anyway.
All of these things were great and all but the main attraction was really the FOOD. Oh geeze it was all so good. They had so many stations cooking up beef with vegetables, chicken with noodles ("yaki soba"), just meat... so much. In addition to all that, they had stands with rice balls, udon noodles, hot dogs on a stick ("american dogs"), oden (Japanese hotpot), and.... other stuff that I can't remember. It was really glorious. The picture on flickr of the spread we have does not even do it justice. It was a good day, let me tell you.
Overall there were probably more than 4000 people there, judging by the raffle numbers that were called at the end. Unfortunately none of us (me or my Vietnamese friends) won any of the prizes, but we still had a really good time. I am really happy that I took that alternate route home that one day and ended up meeting them. It is also a good thing that I ride my bike so much so that I can afford to do things like that every once in a while. Even a week later I still remember how stuffed I was! Mm... delightful.
full & contented future love,
-greg.
ps: if you forgot... fotos
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